The decision to expand into the Kansas City area is the result of a multi-year process of developing successful projects and a robust professional network. Jim Wolterman, partner and co-founder of SWT Design says the move “solidifies the firm’s continued investment within the region.”

“We’ve been thinking about this move for some time now. Expanding our reach is an important part of our strategic plan for growth. We’re already here. What we want now is to be part of the Kansas City community permanently.” says Wolterman.

To begin, the firm has hired long-time Kansas City, MO resident and El Dorado, KS native Cale Doornbos to lead the new studio. A Kansas State graduate (BLA, 2001), Cale is a registered landscape architect with 15 years of experience and a global portfolio in planning and designing the public realm. Doornbos attributes his success over the years to working closely with other design disciplines.

“Collaboration fosters great design. I’ve always enjoyed working with other disciplines, both within and outside of the design industry,” says Doornbos. “My work has taken me all across the world, and for that I’m grateful. But I’m truly excited about the opportunity to continue to help build and shape the Kansas City region.”

His local work includes collaborating on 18Broadway, a city-block urban agriculture installment in the Crossroads Arts District, the Black & Veatch World Headquarters Expansion, the new Dairy Farmers of America Headquarters, the Kansas State Olathe Innovation Campus Masterplan, and the 51st & Oak mixed-use development.

In addition to the new studio in Kansas City, SWT Design continues to reinvest in its campus in St. Louis. The firm recently completed its third expansion, adding another 4,500 s.f. of studio space to its existing campus. With the previous expansion now nearly 10 years old, the firm saw this as an opportunity to foster a truly collaborative and inspiring work environment and reinforce its commitment to the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Now celebrating 21 years, SWT Design has grown to become one of the largest stand-alone disciplines of its kind in the Midwest. As a strong proponent of sustainable design, the firm was at the forefront of developing the Sustainable Sites Initiative, working closely alongside other founding partners and agencies to develop what has become the world’s first comprehensive rating system for the design, development, and management of sustainable landscapes around the globe.

Within the Kansas City area, SWT Design recently led and completed an updated strategic plan for the Johnson County Park and Recreation District. “The JCPRD Legacy Plan,” as it’s named, serves as a guide for the evolution of the Park and Recreation District over the next 15 years. In 2014, the firm collaborated with the University of Kansas Medical Center on the design and first phase construction of a new main courtyard on its campus. SWT Design also served as lead landscape architect for the Bass Pro Shops in both Olathe and Independence, KS.

SWT Design plans to open the Kansas City, MO office on Monday, August 22nd.

]]>Amplifying the Impact of Parks on Community Health and Wellnesshttp://swtdesign.com/amplifying-the-impact-of-parks-on-community-health-and-wellness/
Wed, 09 Mar 2016 22:30:15 +0000http://swtdesign.com/?p=1805Above: The Discovery Playground in Jaycee Park (St. Charles, MO) promotes equity through inclusive play, and, as a destination playground, supports increased social contact among diverse community members.

A New Tool for Parks: Sustainable SITES Initiative

Two weeks ago, parks and recreation professionals, planners, designers, and advocates gathered in Columbia, Missouri for the 2016 Missouri Park and Recreation Association (MPRA) Conference. The conference theme Building on a Solid Foundation spoke to the industry’s interest in employing existing resources towards the goal of promoting conservation, social equity, and health and wellness –NRPA’s three pillars. To this end, SWT Design Partner Jay Wohlschlaeger shared our firm’s approach to incorporating existing data and research into evidence-based park planning and design with a presentation entitled ‘A New Tool for Parks: Sustainable SITES Initiative.’

More than a rating system capable of evaluating just the economic and environmental merit of an outdoor space, the Sustainable SITES Initiative (SITES) considers the impact of a landscape on its community to be a significant factor in its classification as “sustainable.” To us, this makes sense: a space that is well loved will be well cared for; a space that supports its users will be supported, to the degree that is feasible, by its users. The principle isn’t hard to get behind. But, putting the belief into action by weaving this thinking into the design of a park or open space system? That can get tricky. And in our office, that’s when we lean on the SITES guidelines.

Take for example, the topic of human health and well-being. According to the NRPA report ‘Americans’ Broad-Based Support for Local Recreation and Park Services’ published earlier this year, 84% of residents polled believe that offering facilities and services to improve physical health should be a high priority for their local park and recreation agency. Likewise, 80% believe the same to be true for offering facilities and services to reduce stress and improve mental health. Those trusted with the design of public open space inherit these priorities and, due to the transparent nature of the public planning process, are often called upon to demonstrate a design’s ability to meet community needs, in this case a demand for improved human health.

As landscape architects, designing healthy environments is part of our DNA. The cause is so critical to our profession that the impact of landscape architects upon public health, safety, and welfare is frequently cited as chief cause for licensure. High performing landscape designs do much more than mitigate the dangers associated with standing waters and mosquitos. Landscape architecture promotes human health and wellness by encouraging stronger social networks and providing spaces for mental respite and physical activity that are accessible to community members of various ages, abilities, and backgrounds. In comparison to our field’s proficiency in this type of design, however, our collective body of research, and our ability to use performance metrics to inform and communicate design outcomes, is underdeveloped –something that can be a barrier to collaboration and community engagement.

Sites Section 6: Human Health and Well-being operates on a definition of healthful landscape design that is in line with the range of impacts described above. The section calls for tangible measurements in support of a site’s ability to promote community health. Guidelines such as “Provide optimum site accessibility, safety, and wayfinding” (Credit 6.2) and “Support physical activity” (Credit 6.5) serve as prompts for including health mitigating improvements into the site design. Metrics which demonstrate a design’s achievement of targeted guidelines can be curated from a solid foundation of resources that have already been assembled and in many cases peer-reviewed. Resources highlighted in the presentation include the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s Landscape Performance Series and research published by the NRPA, American Planning Association (APA), Urban Land Institute (ULI), and parks leaders such as the National Park Service (NPS).

The practice of assessing a proposed landscape against SITES guidelines is one that can add value to open space design and planning at multiple phases within the design process, regardless of whether or not the project will seek SITES certification. When we use SITES as a framework for drawing information, studies, data, and best practices into the planning and design process we are challenging ourselves to critically evaluate the potential performance of a site. Because of the structure of the rating system which includes 8 distinct sections (ranging from Site Design: Water to Education and Performance Monitoring) we are challenging ourselves to examine the site as it will ultimately function, as one integrated living design.

Bonnie Roy, PLA, AICP and Partner with SWT Design was recently featured in an article she co-authored for the September 2015 ITE Journal for the Institute for Transportation Engineers.

In August 2014, the world saw the events of Ferguson, MO unfold on West Florissant Ave creating a debate about how a mostly white police force engaged with a predominantly African-American community. What has become a common household name – “Ferguson” – in not an isolated situation. Many communities around the country face similar issues with the intersection of race, class, underprivileged areas, and underserved citizens. Perhaps something that was missed in looking at the polarized images was the backdrop of the infrastructure landscape…

Rendering of the entrance to the “North Gateway” off of Leonor K Sullivan Blvd (image credit: MVVA)

Just south of one of the oldest districts in the city of St. Louis – cobble streets and all – is a gem of a bridge. Even if you’re not aware that it was the first to be constructed using only cantilever support methods, you can’t help but feel like you’re walking through history as you pass under its seven-story-tall arches. On the other side, east of the lawn where you sometimes bring your lunch, is a garden packed with native plants that Lewis and Clark wrote of discovering in their now famous journals. That’s where you’re headed today. To get there you walk along the edge of a mound, from which, through a curtain of trees and understory plantings, you can see the Gateway Arch.

Or, at least you will be able to, when the construction of the CityArchRiver 2015 project is complete.

Despite this vision, the new design has not come without opposition. That explorer’s garden we can’t wait to poke around in? It used to be a parking garage. And while some patrons are concerned about parking, others are in firm disagreement with the alleé tree replacement. The implementation of a second generation monoculture alleé was a decision that weighed the historic significance of Dan Kiley’s original design with the potential ecological consequences of single species planting. To residents and local professionals, the decision was personal. But it’s important for us to take a step back and realize that the central questions at play were not unique. As more of our nation’s cultural landscapes require renovation, landscape architects will continue to ask: “Which wins here: culture or nature? Aesthetics or performance?” To these questions we add another, and we answer it with this:

“If no one hears the tree fall, it still makes a sound,

but it doesn’t make a feeling.”

Image credit: Laura Schatzman, North 2nd St in Laclede’s Landing

Landscape architecture has historically been described as an invisible hand: if done right, the design of a space escapes notice. This is a practice that our profession has prided itself on. So why have landscape architects, championed state-side by ASLA, embarked on a global public awareness effort? As part of a social media campaign that began as “World Landscape Architecture Month” (#WLMA2015), colleagues from 26 different countries have shared photographs of sites designed by landscape architects. Each photo even contains an orange card alerting the viewer of that fact. But why take off the invisibility glove now?

The motives for the campaign reach beyond professional advocacy, beyond the very real notion that it’s important for the general public to be aware of the work being done by landscape architects. The (in)visibility of the profession certainly plays a role in the ongoing fight for public funding, but the orange cards represent a grassroots effort to change more than the public’s perception of our field. In calling out the designed nature of these spaces, we’re working to change the public’s relationship to the sites around them. When we as designers operate unseen, especially in urban environments that require community participation to make them great, we’re knocking down trees next to a heavy metal concert. There are people around, but no one hears, or feels, a change.

The invisible hand no longer serves the users of many contemporary urban sites. Unlike perhaps at the birth of the profession when pioneers like Olmsted sought to “recreate nature” in large urban parks today, designers often operate in interstitial spaces, and the undesirable locations that have, by being so undesirable, escaped development. In these sites, any sort of intentional planting is glaringly obvious; spaces that downplay natural elements, such as turf strips in streetscapes, are often overlooked. Their care quite literally falls through the cracks; and consequently, the ecosystem services these features would have provided are lost. The concept of hypernature – a hyperbolic expression of constructed nature – asks designers to acknowledge that such spaces are often experienced by distracted urban users, and therefore must cut through noise (iPhones, headphones, and compulsive Fitbit checking) to impact its inhabitants. Not only is a space which may be experienced as “natural” nearly impossible to achieve immediately surrounded by post-industrial lots and freeways, the attempt may also be counterproductive to ecological performance of the site. Perhaps most importantly: it may fail to capture the attention of its users.

Hypernature aesthetic (seen here at work in Brooklyn Bridge Park) speaks through Form, Juxtaposition, and Densification.

Ecosystems are networks. Nodes, patches, corridors: no matter how many retweets our orange cards get, they won’t all be designed by landscape architects. The shared backyard of an apartment building, the right-of-way of an active train line, and the sandbars in our river are all part of the larger, urban ecological network. So too are commuting patterns and the choices we make as consumers. If landscape architecture can produce legible designs from which the public can read performance, function, and beauty, the pieces of the network not designed by landscape architects may still be informed by the same belief which drives so many of us: that, as Elizabeth Meyer writes, “designed landscapes need to be constructed human experiences as much as ecosystems.”[i] When these two experiences are presented, spatially, as interconnected as they truly are, we have a better chance of seeing our place in the network and the responsibility each one of us has towards the whole. And so, hypernature is the orange card we stamp many of our designs with, calling out to users to say, if not, “Designed by a Landscape Architect,” at least:

“I am designed. I am intentional. I am working.”

More than landscape architects, SWT is a group of planners, urban designers, strategists, and system thinkers. Our work is not only informed by research and analysis, but also by our decisions as artists to design site elements which, in Elizabeth Meyer’s words, “…raise awareness of rhythms and cycles necessary to sustain and regenerate life.” [i] When we help an innovative work space put a rain garden at its front door—the site earns more than LEED credits. Everyone who enters the building is told, daily, the living story of water in our region. When we collaborate with clients to develop maintenance guidelines, we’re not just planning for efficient use of resources. We’re planning for a future in which the functions of the landscape can be supported; a future in which the site experience continues to perform on, and inspire, its users. Although, in many instances, we may choose to drop the invisibility glove, the spaces we touch are still not designed by our hand alone. Our intention is always to give voice to the site that existed before the design, and the natural and human processes that will perform, planned or not, within the space.

]]>Planning for Growth: Bonnie Roy, SWT Partner, Earns AICP Certificationhttp://swtdesign.com/planning-for-growth-bonnie-roy-swt-partner-earns-aicp-certification/
Tue, 21 Jul 2015 16:49:58 +0000http://swtdesign.com/?p=1466SWT Design is proud to congratulate Bonnie Roy on obtaining her AICP certification earlier this month. A partner with the firm since 2011, Bonnie brings more than 10 years of experience to our planning and urban design practice. The American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) is the American Planning Association’s (APA) professional institute, and certification from AICP is the only nationwide independent verification of a planner’s qualifications.

Bonnie’s focus with SWT is on the interplay of landscape architecture, architecture, and infrastructure in the metropolitan built environment. Currently, she is managing a project team to develop a sustainable master plan for Old North St. Louis. This on the heels of the Great Streets Initiative for W. Florissant Ave. in North St. Louis County in 2014, and the Saint Louis Zoo’s Expansion Framework Plan in 2013.

Bonnie earned a Masters of Urban Design from Washington University-St. Louis, and extended her academic passion in 2012 as an Associate Faculty/Lecturer for the university’s Sam Fox School of Design. She holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Ball State University.

]]>Building a Resilient City: Reducing Urban Floodinghttp://swtdesign.com/building-a-resilient-city-reducing-urban-flooding/
Fri, 15 May 2015 16:16:24 +0000http://swtdesign.com/?p=1327As spring washes winter away with blossoming flowers and lush foliage an all too common hazard returns to our lives. Flooding impacts more and more people every year – a trend that is having substantial impacts on both urban and rural areas across the country. Flooding adversely impacts quality of life, property value and public safety. Believe it or not, the answer to these problems may be all around us in natural undisturbed areas.

If you’ve ever been caught in a woodland or prairie during a rainstorm you might have noticed a quizzical lack of sewer inlets. That’s because nature has been in the stormwater management business long before the first city came to pass. Utilizing soil porosity instead of sewer pipe, and beaver dams in place of detention basins, natural areas tend to reach a level of near equilibrium that may be the key to building resilient cities that provide not only for public safety but also a higher quality of life.

One of four major rain gardens at Cortex Commons (right) mimics those systems found in a naturally occurring wetland

Urbanization has the potential to significantly increase both the frequency and intensity of flooding (up to 600 percent according to the USGS). Examples of this can be seen all across the country with increasing frequency each spring as the rains come. Traditional development patterns have reduced time of concentration and increased runoff quantities through the use of impermeable surfaces and rapid conveyance. These archaic strategies put more water into streams that have been channelized more rapidly than ever experienced in recent history. As cities become larger and more developed, these effects increase exponentially as watersheds become more urbanized.

Thanks to innovative concepts like biomimicry, we have a blueprint to “peel back the pavement” and uncap our cities. Healthy soils and native plants slow runoff resulting in longer concentration times and lower runoff intensities. This increase in time of concentration results in more infiltration, less erosion, lower turbidity, higher transpiration rates, lower nutrient loss, and more locally available water for plants and animals. This collectively reduces the amount of water flowing into rivers and streams during heavy storm events, and reduces the frequency and intensity of flood events. Stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) that mimic natural systems can be applied at all scales of development from city wide infrastructure systems to backyard pollinator gardens. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is a great place to start learning more about Green Infrastructure and how you can help build a resilient city for the future.

March 25th was the annual National Arbor Day Foundation Luncheon and SWT Design has much to celebrate with our clients. Our previously award-winning project, Brightside Demonstration Garden, was honored by the Missouri Department of Conservation with the first ever “Project of Distinction” award. This award is meant to challenge the 40 municipalities within the St. Louis region to reach for even greater outcomes within the Tree City USA Program.

Also recognized at the luncheon was Washington University, St. Louis. SWT Design has partnered with the university on more than 50 campus improvement projects over the last 8 years, including its most recent “Arboriculture Framework Plan.” Of the six universities within the State of Missouri designated as a Tree Campus USA, Washington University is one of three celebrating its 5th year in the program.

From SWT Design, congratulations to both Brightside and Washington University, St. Louis.

“The problem is not so much what we don’t know; it’s what we think we know that just ain’t so.” (Attributed to Mark Twain)

Last week, the House Budget Committee introduced its Fiscal Year 2016 budget, “A Balanced Budget for a Stronger America.” Although the bill includes the highest margin of cuts ever proposed by the Committee, the proposed $3.8 trillion in spending represents one fifth of our country’s total economic output. With such large stakes, there is a growing movement in Washington to support funding practices with evidence that the programs being financed will achieve their goals. Evidence-based decision making at a policy level is a cause that is deeply related to the future work of all designers of living systems. Policy directs federal spending and without economic support, projects ranging from native restoration and trail development to the revitalization of downtown business districts may not be realized.

Evidence-based designers and policymakers share a common belief that investment opportunities should be weighed against the most reliable proof of return available, and that this return should be evaluated within the objectives of the program (or project in our case). All interventions within the social and physical environment have a range of outcomes – cultural, economic, and ecological—each of which is associated with a definitive field of professionals committed to researching the changing needs and limits of healthy societies. There is no one field that has all the answers. As designers of living systems we see our role as a bridge between the realm of research and the inhabitable space in which evidence-based principles are tested. We believe that professionals can empower evidence-based policy making by integrating performance evaluation into design and planning projects, and by testing proposed best practices in market conditions.

Political climates can and will shift. Policies are made and repealed. Within this environment, the evidence base built by the design community will be a constant. While the research will continue to evolve and build upon itself, decision makers at all levels can find common ground in the type of data that can only be obtained by the people who make and shape human spaces: studies that assess a project from the moment a need was first identified to its implementation, establishment and eventual occupation and use.

]]>http://swtdesign.com/prove-it-or-lose-it-designs-role-in-evidence-based-policymaking-2/feed/0What can planners do with a shared data platform? Build on it.http://swtdesign.com/what-can-planners-do-with-a-shared-data-platform-build-on-it-2/
http://swtdesign.com/what-can-planners-do-with-a-shared-data-platform-build-on-it-2/#respondTue, 24 Feb 2015 13:22:49 +0000http://swtdesign.com/?p=1220Connected through their use of PRORAGIS, a nationwide network of park and recreation planners benefit from their collective experience.

This past December, SWT Design participated in a PRORAGIS Inventory Workshop hosted by Great Rivers Greenway. In addition to an instructional webinar, the event included an opportunity for park and recreation providers to input their annual data and for consultant organizations, like ours, to become acclimated with the platform and its capabilities: comparative benchmarking, report generation, and evaluation of park impacts within communities.

Beyond the trends analysis reports and case studies that PRORAGIS empowers the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) and its members to produce, the platform’s user process itself has a value within parks and recreation design and strategic planning. Participating agencies monitor and track their performance data, and in doing so prepare their organization for the use of adaptive management, an approach which emphasizes responsive and efficient use of resources. As more agencies participate, the strength of PRORAGIS as a planning tool grows; each user can plan based not only on their own past performance but upon the collective experience of similar parks and recreation organizations— a capability that NRPA refers to as comparative benchmarking. In this way, peer to peer comparison can inform decisions to expanded functions and respond to changing demographics. The industry-specific data captured in PRORAGIS may also help agencies to defend budgeting practices and to communicate the true value of proposed parks and services.

In the age of open information, shared, consistently tracked data can be a critical component in establishing trust within and towards public agencies. We believe that the relationship-building potential of the system monitoring inherent to the use of PRORAGIS may prove equally valuable to the platform’s comparative benchmarking abilities. Even as parks and recreation budgets begin to recover from the recession, public-private partnerships are expected to participate in the management, development and renewal of our nation’s park and recreation assets. While the availability of accurate data is a first step towards the transparent communication that many partners seek, PRORAGIS may have a role to play in subsequent partnership steps as well. We imagine its evolution from a platform that informs decision making at district and industry-wide scales to a network that solidifies and enhances partnerships of all scales.

Updates to the PRORAGIS system released earlier this year include off-line worksheets intended to streamline the data collection and inventory upload process. With their ability to collect information from an agency’s administrative team throughout the year and then smartly upload and repopulate data input fields within PRORAGIS, these worksheets have set a precedent in which high level summary data is stored in the online database while working documents and calculations are maintained offline within a uniform set of tools.

Likewise, a specific set of worksheets could be created to consistently collect and manage partnership initiatives through PRORAGIS. Within this same model, operations and maintenance worksheets as well as input forms to track and guide capital replacement could be created. Information entered into these worksheets would contribute to an industry-wide evidence-base with the potential to generate even more relevant and tailored data as the information economy trends towards the development of sophisticated analysis software. In the time since NRPA launched PRORAGIS in 2010, the focus of the big data movement has shifted from “collecting” to “connecting” information. In the years to come, not only will more organizations be tracking and storing data, but they will also be doing more with it; both public and private organizations are expected to add increased utility to their data through analytics.

Thanks to data collection platforms such as PRORAGIS, the information necessary to execute analytics will be available. However, in many cases, the algorithms for calculating the data’s use and the pathways for incorporating findings into operations still need to be designed. Once established, analytic programs could anticipate staffing needs, adapt maintenance guidelines to account for specific weather events, and assess proposed park and recreation designs against long-term performance and impact. The PRORAGIS system can grow towards all of these functions and more if designers continue to challenge themselves to use the findings from the database to inform design work and incorporate the system’s process within the strategic functions of park and recreation organizations.

In other words: the groundwork is there, the platform is sturdy; we have to build the infrastructure.

]]>http://swtdesign.com/what-can-planners-do-with-a-shared-data-platform-build-on-it-2/feed/0SWT Recognized in Green Business Challengehttp://swtdesign.com/swt-recognized-in-green-business-challenge/
http://swtdesign.com/swt-recognized-in-green-business-challenge/#respondTue, 20 Jan 2015 21:25:55 +0000http://swtdesign.com/?p=1203For a fourth consecutive year, SWT has been recognized by the St. Louis Regional Chamber and the Missouri Botanical Garden for our participation in the St. Louis Green Business Challenge. The challenge supports the integration of sustainable best practices into the daily operations of an organization, including assisting in the adoption of strategies that can improve financial performance, engage employees, and reduce the environmental impact of operations.

SWT has participated since the challenge’s inception in 2010. This year SWT received the Award of Merit at the Champions Level, marking the highest level of recognition in the challenge.